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by Bruce Maulden

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‘Too Much Killing’

February 4, 2015

Overcast and chilly this early Wednesday on California’s north coast — supposedly a break today from continuous rain the last few days, and tonight, maybe tomorrow, a big river-express storm should precipitate perpetually for a good while.

Seemingly, planet earth has gone topsy-turvy with violence, even beyond a cruel norm — yesterday there were two fatal police shootings in the East Bay area, adjacent to San Francisco, and in one of those incidents was the last two graphs I cut-and-pasted from SFGate last night, which epitomized the situation:

A group of about 20 neighbors gathered on a corner near where the shooting took place, talking and exchanging theories about what happened. “Too much killing in the world,” said one neighbor, shaking her head.

Oddly, though, the above was edited out in subsequent editions, and I can’t find those paragraphs in any form — the story might still be available with that section intact via the San Francisco Chronicle, which is behind a paywall. Later updates from that same link above, however, did carry this within the same shooting incident:

Oakland resident Russ Whitehead said he was pulling into the storage facility to unload boxes when he saw a woman screaming and five or six officers shouting commands at her from behind a police car. “All of a sudden there was gunfire right next to me,” he said. Whitehead said he ducked as bullets shattered the windows of his gray Ford Focus. Because he dropped to the ground, he said he didn’t see what the woman was doing when she was shot. Six or seven shots rang out, Whitehead said, before an officer approached his car to see if he was OK. He said he was covered in broken glass but unhurt. “I wasn’t really scared in the moment. You either live or you die,” he said. “I’m just sorry that things like this have to happen.”